International job offers shoot up at IITs

Kolkata | New Delhi: Job offers for foreign postings have shot up at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the initial days of final placements this year, as global companies try to snap up the cream of the country’s tech talent.

IITs including Delhi, Roorkee, Bombay and Hyderabad have reported a surge in international offers in the first couple of days of the final placements that started on December 1, with Kanpur and Guwahati saying their international offers have doubled.

This, along with the fact that Microsoft and Uber are offering Rs 1 crore-plus packages and there are more first-time recruiters, pushing up the overall number of offers, have given the country’s premier tech campuses plenty to cheer.

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“This is a market-driven phenomenon,” said Syam Nair, chairman of student placement office at IIT Kanpur. “Industry is confident and coming forward and investing in top talent,” he said.

IIT Kanpur received 10 international offers in the first two days, and students at the institute’s placement cell expect the total number of international offers to rise to 18 this year, from seven last year.

As reported by ET earlier, Microsoft is the top paymaster on campus offering Rs 1.5 crore ($214,600) including base salary, performance bonus, joining bonus and restricted stock units. Campus sources at top IITs told ET that Uber is paying approximately $150,000 (Rs 1.05 crore) all inclusive.

In the first couple of days of placements, IIT Guwahati students have bagged about six international offers: from Microsoft, Uber and Works Applications. That’s twice the number of offers it got in the corresponding period last year.

At IIT Delhi, 25 international offers— 25% up from last year—were made to the students on Day 1 by companies from Japan, Singapore and US. Microsoft Redmond (US) and Squarepoint Capital, Singapore, made the maximum number of offers. Last year, Delhi IIT saw 20 international offers on Day 1.

In the first two days of placements, students at IIT Madras have bagged seven foreign offers from the likes of Microsoft, Uber, Halma and Rubrik in locations such as the US, Singapore and Dubai.

IIT Hyderabad has 11 international offers as of December 3, noon. Most of the international offers are from Japan, from the likes of SoftBank, Mercari, Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRIAD), Works Applications, Denso and SMS Data Tech.

IIT Roorkee confirmed that till now the institute had about 12 international offers in hand with postings in the US, Japan and Singapore.

Microsoft, Uber, Squarepoint Capital and Mercari are among those that have made offers; more are expected in the coming days.

IIT Kharagpur has seen 20 such offers so far; four each from Microsoft in the US and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Japanese corporations have been leading the show with six offers by Mercari, three by Bizreach and one by Yahoo Japan. Uber has made one offer.

IIT Kanpur students have so far received three international placement offers each from Microsoft and Graviton Research Capital, two from Uber, and one each from Rubrik and Yahoo Japan. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is yet to visit this campus.

“At Microsoft, we are always looking for smart people with a passion for creating things that change the world,” said Ira Gupta, head HR at Microsoft India. “This is why each year we visit some of the best engineering schools around the world, including the IITs and other top engineering colleges in India. The students we hire are placed both in India and internationally, based on the role, their preference, and where we think they would be empowered to do their best work,” she said.

Rubrik—another international recruiter that placement teams say is paying a base salary of about $100,000—said it is visiting Madras, Delhi, Bombay and Kanpur IITs this year. “We have found engineers from IITs to have strong fundamentals in computer science,” a Rubrik spokesperson said. “They are curious, always willing to learn and most importantly, willing to take risks.”

The company said it has no specific hiring cap. “Rubrik will hire as many well-qualified engineers as we can,” the spokesperson said.